


Fragmentary

by hellkitty



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Dark, Gen, Psychological Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 05:59:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/833550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little thing for a dark-bingo challenge, prompts were 'dungeon, depression, mental illness and injury'</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fragmentary

 

_The datatfile below is a reconstruction of a mnemolog found on dataslug discovered in a prison cell on the captured Decepticon trireme-class warship, Vincis. I have recovered it to the best of my ability, but the data has, at some points, been corrupted. I, Curette, former mnemosurgeon stationed on the Autobot ship Farflung, have been tasked in reconstruction of this datalog to the best of my abilities. My emendations will be marked in brackets, as will any noticeable gaps._

[.....]

Someone once said hope is the easiest thing to lose, but the hardest thing to regain. Someone. I don’t remember who, though I feel like I should remember. There’s so much I think I should remember, things that I think I have forgotten. Can you remember forgetting something? Or am I just forgetting to remember?

And there I go again, lost in language. Words, which I should be the master of, mastering me. It’s what happens, I think, when we slip the real, skim-slide into the murky abstract.

I think it’s because I don’t want the real. To record it makes it history, in a sense, gives it detail and form, molds it into an arrow pointing to a telos where...I don’t want to look.

As if I can prevent the inevitable from happening merely by refusing to look. I’m sure the ghosts of many soldiers would line up to laugh at me for that superstitious notion. It’s merely cowardice, really, because I’m no soldier; I never have been. I love my life, however small, just a bit more than I can love an ideology. It’s a lack of faith, I think; I can’t believe in anything outside, larger than myself. The product, if I think about it, of my education. Back before the war, that was what education taught us--that the self, self-actualization, was the highest goal, and that sacrificing that to anything else made us stupid, gullible, tools used by cleverer minds.

Though, I suppose one could argue that soldiers are spiritually stronger than I am. How else, after all, do you stand in front of thos who would kill you for what you believe? I would not stand: I knelt, bowing in surrender when they came, crashing through the door with all the brutality of the reality I’d been trying to hold at bay all these years.

I expected a round to end me, and I felt a storm of fearful calm rage over me, a panic at my powerlessness, whipping around a core of that academic nihilism: that it was, after all, for nothing, that my studies, all my pursuit in understanding the mind and how it works was all for naught.

Because what else can you do in the face of the inevitable?

A soldier once told me, explained to me in a drunken lecture, as he sloshed his [engex in front] of me, that death was inevitable, but the only thing in his control was how he met it. He could die, crying and protesting, or he could die in a way that others would honor.

He died. They all do, these soldiers.

And I wonder, sometimes, now, in this place, about him, about how it might feel to have one’s last existing thought be self-contempt.

I think I’ve discovered why I’m writing this--to try to fill my thoughts with something else, then, because any thought here could be my last.

[Text corrupted, chrono gap of what appears to be several days]

The darkness, I realize, is deliberate. Spiritual and mental weight of not seeing, not knowing, surrounded by a mass of shadows that at any moment might reveal the glow of maleficent optics, the sinister crunch of foot on the pitted plascrete.[....]

The darkness also keeps you from sensing yourself, seeing yourself. I feel myself dissolve in it, as though I have no borders, no boundary, as though I am dissolving, ultimately permeable and unsolid, coming apart at invisible seams.

You. I. Me. The lines between pronouns blur, even. I am I. I am that with this history. I am that which can remember, re-member, dis-member. I am [...]

[Chrono gap, _I am unable to estimate the duration--Curette._ ]

[...I am thinking] about rules. It’s almost an elegant system he’s put into place, elegance being a function of thoroughness and economy. Rules bind both sides, set up boundaries of what is licit and illicit. If there are rules, there is control, even a small crumb, to the prisoner bound by them. You think you have control, if you can figure out the rules, control, at least, if not to exploit to escape then at least not to make anything worse. You think you have power not to draw their attention, their notice, and thus escape the worst of their actions. Stay invisible and stay unbeaten. Protest nothing and hope, cowardly, that they’ll vent their petty rages on someone else, a fellow Autobot, one with more defiance and less intelligence.

Every day, they summon us from our cells, a way of headcount, a way of testing us. Some burst from their cells when the doors wheel open, launching themselves at the guards. Some protest, hunching defiantly in their cells, refusing obedience, inviting, sometimes taunting the guards to come get them. Some step out--like me--meekly obedient, resigned, hoping just to be left alone, to be nameless, faceless, to be a nonperson, a non entity.

Perhaps those who act with violence aren’t stupid; perhaps they are asserting some form of identity. After all, pain persists, pain gives the body borders and boundaries. Being invisible, being a nobody [....] want it.

They say he’s coming. They, that mysterious whispering voice of rumor, that has no source, a kind of formlessness of its own. The murmurs come as we stand in line outside our cells, whispered in that papery unidentifiable voice. The guards hear it--the guards may in fact be the whisperers. They don’t stop it the rumors. There’s some use, after all, in the invocation of his name: Megatron.

He has a name, he’s allowed a name. We’re merely allowed our prisoner numbers, a metastring that restarts history, that begins us again as prisoners, effacing, erasing any identity before, so that I become a prisoner with no identity of my own, no history of my own except what I remember, what I tell myself.

The worst beating I’ve ever seen was given to a prisoner who insisted on his own name, shouting it in answer to a query to his prisoner number.

Three days later, he was gone and the guards simply joked that his name now was ‘Dead’. It was a lesson none of us forgot.

[chrono gap]

We are to be used as slaves. That’s not a rumor, it has the solid, dreadful ring of the guards themselves. They are building something, something big.

We spent the day herded into a massive room, outside of our cells. We were like blinded creatures, dazzled by the, light, each other, ourselves. It felt strange to see limbs and faces, to do anything more than feel one’s body standing at attention, face forward, trying to do nothing, to see nothing, to become nothing.

It was cycles before any of us dared to speak and even then it was a hushed whisper, and after that initial whisper, there was a long moment of the kind of silence that is borne of fear, as we all expected some reprisal, some response.

None came, and slowly, we began to speak, always afraid, always aware that some topic might be forbidden, so we talked about inconsequentialities, at first, easing slowly into who we were, who we thought we were.

I’d thought my limbs were stiff from the dark confines of my cell, but it was nothing compared to how my mind felt, stretching back to my history: my name, the city I was from, my last duty posting.

Garrus-9. It was Garrus-9. It’s hard to remember it clearly now, the cells and corridors of that place melded so closely with this. The name floated to me for the first time in days,like a phrase in a foreign language and I had it over and over in my mouth, tasting it, until it revealed itself, hazy and indistinct. But I remember Fortress Maximus’s voice, always calm, authorizing the evacuation.

It was only us clerical types who were included: probably as much getting us out of his way as out of the way of Skyquake’s oncoming army. And we took comfort in our uselessness, honestly, and faith in his voice, until it all fell through, until Skyquake’s forces intercepted our pitiful little evacuation skimmer.

They thought we had value. They thought we knew things. And perhaps, at one point, we had, before we realized it was dangerous to know anything, even our name. We forgot, willingly, powerfully, exerting every effort we could in denying ourselves.

We did our work of forgetting too well.

[corrupted text]….turned out to be a lie. Or not a lie, but some other untrue thing. We are not to be slaves. That would give us purpose, resistance, action, something to do, something to fill our minds beyond this endless nothing. I'd never thought boredom would be a torment before. It is. It's a corrosion, eating away at me. Or not; the rumors are unclear and we are left to feed on crumbs of rumors like cyberrats in the gutters

A mix of disappointment and relief: we would have died, as slaves, even more surely than we are dying now. Now, it is one at a time, dying by micrometers, there would be fast, and by mechanometers, brutal and ugly, worked to death.

“To rust unburnished, not to shine in youth”. I remember that phrase, from some great poet, insisting that use, utility, was the greater honor, and that sitting was rotting, in a sense.

We are rotting, but I don’t think that ancient would consider toiling against his will at some machine destined to kill one’s friends (if we still have any) to be worth much shine.

Moot. Moot and irrelevant as we are sent back to our individual cells without explanation. Only truly alive things deserve explanations, you see, and we are no longer fully alive. We’re no longer fully people, but the half-dead, shambling nameless things, obedient toys. If we have any purpose any more it is not decided by ourselves but forced upon us by others, those with the power to label, the ability to leave.

We are the labeled. We are the left.

[Chronogap]

They’ve taken away the rules, entirely, the last feeble scaffolding of the worlds we’ve constructed here, each of us a tiny microcosm. Before, there was at least the illusion of some control, a little shield of anonymity, that if you were small enough, quiet enough, invisible enough, you could spare yourself the worst.

It’s no longer true. We are taken, by our cell number, by some random draw, so sometimes you can hear the approach, outside your cell, and your spark will quicken, pounding in your chassis as they near yours.

'You', I say, as though this happens to someone else. As though anyone else will ever hear this. I. I hear these things, I feel that sick, spiky pounding of my spark, unsettled, almost like vertigo.

They make no effort, of course, to be quiet. It’s part of the game, for them, to build this terror in us.

Because that’s what it is. Fear has some rationality, after all. Fear is a natural reaction to danger. Terror, though, is unmoored from reason, so that a footstep, a laugh, an offhand syllable muffling through your cell door, can strike you like a lance of ice, making you want to bolt and run, bash yourself against walls, to try to destroy the tiny fragment left of yourself before they do.

If that’s not insanity, I do not know what is.

Some of us don’t come back.

[Chrono gap]

Everything ends. Everything except this. It’s a pressure, unrelenting, unremitting, and something has to give, whether it be yield or surrender or break. Something has to end and I feel my strength waning. I feel myself fading.

I’d thought this log would help keep me together, recall who I was, give me a task and a mission, but I find more and more, I don’t want to record the events

They’re not horrors. They’re not. That would make them special, outstanding, masterpieces, in a sense, of cruelty, of violence, of brutality. Instead, they’re just....utterly banal and that makes it worse, to be worn down under the quotidian, the tedious violence of day to day, the constant awareness that we’re not even worth special violence.

Sometimes they forget about us for days, before coming for another of us. We forget everything but the fear that today is the day they will remember us, like that dreadful span of time between footsteps, stretched out, unbearable.

Escape? We can’t escape. We’re clerks and technicians, not warriors. Or we were. Now, I don’t think I could fill out a patient form if I had to.

I wonder how I’d diagnose myself.

[...] to believe everything could be cured. Now I don’t believe that, at all. There are things that can’t be fixed, gotten over, and all my bag of tricks of compensation, coping...they’re all useless, almost lies. I feel like a liar for having insisted, foisted them on others with such cheerful insistence.

Coping. Who wants to cope with this? Who wants to survive this? What do you do, what will be left of you if you come out the other side?

[....] about the offer, things I shouldn't be thinking. Faithlessness, dishonor, betrayal, treachery: the words march across my consciousness, like the first solid things in aeons. They are real. I am...less real, before them. If I did what they offered, I would be irredeemable. I would be gone, I would betray everything I should believe in.

Can you betray when you don't exist? Are you a traitor if the only thing you have faith in is that [...]

The temptation, the sin, is that it would give me a thing to do, give me, yes, even self-loathing, even those horrible labels. I'd have an identity, I'd be real. Others would look at me and see something, not just a cell number, not just another dark-blinded mech, blinking pitifully in the light. I'd exist. I'd have things to fill my days, to fill my mind. I'd have others to dissect than myself.

It should not tempt me so. It shouldn't, but it calls to me, in a dark, velvety voice. Sometimes, it seduces me--my mind, because the guards only laid the offer before me and stepped away, waiting, waiting, merely nodding with each 'no' each day, patiently, like drops of water wearing down a stone. My mind seduces, telling me I can subvert them, I can use what the give me against them, and instead of helping them break Autobot prisoners, I would free them, help them resist.

I know that's not true. I know once I taste life again, I wouldn't be able to sacrifice myself, it, for a futile heroism.

But the fantasy lulls my moral qualms, and every day, the darkness seems bigger, and heavier and I seem smaller and indistinct, and I know, I know like I know the footsteps of the guards along the corridor, that it is merely a matter of time.

Time, the one luxury we have.

[Chrono gap. _This next passage, the final in the mnemolog, is incomplete and honestly I’m not sure I’ve reconstructed it correctly--Curette_ ]

There is no justice, there is merely nothing, a darkness that embraces us, and this hideous grinning mask we wear to cover our own emptiness. I’ve been empty all along, I realize, trying to fill myself with words, with the thoughts of smart mechs, as though their wisdom could fill this emptiness.

it wasn't wisdom but simply air blowing over reeds, empty noise, trying to drown out the howl of their own loneliness, the fact that the i only exists to feel lack, to feel its isolation.

I wonder if they felt that, too, were aware of their nakedness, their emptiness.

I am not isolated any more. I am one with everything and nothing. I transcend, I descend, I defy I.

[ _Forensic study of the Vincis' prisoner logs shows that the cell was occupied by a mech with a serial registry number of 1,000,000, designation Rung. The significance of this discovery has prompted me to forward this mnemolog to High Command out of concern for Rung's current position and function within the Autobot command cadre.--Curette._ ]

Appended note:  
//begin transmission// Curette:We have received this mnemolog transcript and your concerns. Thank you for bringing this dark chapter in the history of those captives from Garrus-9 to light. Rest assured that this matter will remain confidential and will be handled with the utmost discretion--Prowl. //end transmission//

**Author's Note:**

> I've always been sort of entranced by the fanon idea of Dark!Rung as a sort of sleeper agent (rather than, say, a full-on SG character) and it seems plausible that a) some lower level types would have been evacuated from Garrus 9, and b) Rung would have been mixed in with those. 
> 
> I hope it comes across that Prowl, as in LSOTW machinating Prowl, could very much use this information, his way.


End file.
